Gwen Stefani's house in Los Feliz has a vaguely spooky quality to it. The unease I feel when I pull up in front may simply be the result of my having watched Sunset Boulevard one too many times. There are candles flickering and religious iconography here and there. It's as if Stefani's entire home is a kind of Gothy take on old Hollywood.
While I wait for the lady of the house, I look at framed family photographs in one corner. There is a picture of Stefani as Jean Harlow, taken on the set of The Aviator, Martin Scorsese's forthcoming Howard Hughes biopic starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Though she utters only a few lines in a movie-premiere scene, a cameo in a Scorsese film on Leo's arm is certainly not the worst way to announce that she is ready for her close-up.
Today Stefani's wearing a sleeveless T-shirt with wide red, green, and yellow stripes, and a pair of complicated new Levi's jeans, worn low and long. Lacy underthings peek out from the top of her jeans. On her feet: sweat socks and Adidas flip-flops. Around her neck is a diamond choker that spells out WIFE in Gothic, diamond-encrusted lettering—a gift from her husband, Gavin Rossdale. Her white-white hair is a marvel of structural engineering, pulled back tight on the sides and piled high up on her head in a kind of squared-off, simulated Mohawk. Like so much of Stefani's style, the do manages to simultaneously evoke forties Hollywood and early-eighties SoCal punk. It's quite a trick.
Photos by Steven Meisel
